Nonja, like many 33 year old Austrians, has been taking dozens of photos of herself, her friends, and her surroundings and posting them to facebook. She's got 41,000+ friends. What makes her special? She's an orangutan. [more inside]
posted by fontophilic on Dec 6, 2009 - 34 comments

Facebook Profiles Capture True Personality Online social networks such as Facebook are being used to express and communicate real personality, instead of an idealized virtual identity, according to new research from psychologist Sam Gosling at The University of Texas at Austin. [more inside]
posted by psmealey on Dec 3, 2009 - 51 comments

Internet Vices: various Web 2.0 sites and services, recast as drugs and alcohol. [more inside]
posted by ShawnStruck on Nov 20, 2009 - 29 comments

Ask Recipe Labs is a cooking-related question and answer site, based off of the Stack Overflow structure (prev). Ask Recipe Lab is the newest part of collection of recipe-based sites, which includes Recipe Puppy (an ingredient based recipe search engine, prev. from MeFi Projects), Cook Thing (how to cook anything, by picking a dish and the ingredients you wish to use), and Recipe Labs (social recipe repository, allowing quick tweaks to existing recipes). [via mefi projects]
posted by filthy light thief on Nov 20, 2009 - 4 comments

"I funded the company myself but I did every horrible thing in the book to, just to get revenues right away." So said Mark Pincus, CEO and founder of Zynga, the company behind social games like Mafia Wars and Farmville. It's the latest revelation in a week-long bit of drama between TechCrunch and the companies running the shady virtual currency that makes the games profitable. [more inside]
posted by jbickers on Nov 6, 2009 - 43 comments

Asymmetrical friendship: Tired of the relentless positivity of social-networking sites, where, as on Facebook, all you can be is a “friend” of someone? Greg Smith responds to a journal article that addressed the topic, among others; Smith calls for “asymmetrical friendship – this is cynicism put to good use.” Because there are times when somebody “friends” you on Facebook when what you think of them is more along the lines of “enemy combatant.” [more inside]
posted by joeclark on Oct 27, 2009 - 63 comments

Super-Social Networking: Superhero Facebook Status Updates
posted by griphus on Oct 5, 2009 - 25 comments

The Social Media Guru (SLYT)
posted by geekyguy on Oct 5, 2009 - 19 comments

Are social networks becoming segregated by choice?

"MySpace is no longer cool. As a matter of fact, its number of users is now one-half the size of rival Facebook. Is this because MySpace is too black for the rest of America? Teenage Internet users may hold the answer. High-schoolers report their use of the social-networking giants along racial lines—MySpace is seen as “black,” while Facebook is “white.”

posted by Marky on Sep 29, 2009 - 252 comments

The Washington Post has issued new Social Media Guidelines for all employees. From the memo: "All Washington Post journalists relinquish some of the personal privileges of private citizens." [more inside]
posted by Ike_Arumba on Sep 27, 2009 - 24 comments

It started as a simple term project for an MIT class on ethics and law on the electronic frontier. Using data from the social network Facebook, they made a striking discovery: just by looking at a person’s online friends, they could predict whether the person was gay.
posted by Kirth Gerson on Sep 20, 2009 - 80 comments

Things seem to be going from bad to worse in PR terms for the Dixon Stores Group. First, PC World was voted one of the worst high-street stores in Britain. Then, their staff Facebook group reveals a lot of somewhat interesting comments abotu their customers. [more inside]
posted by mippy on Sep 4, 2009 - 37 comments

There are five key rules to using your status update to maximum status-signifying effect. Learn from the masters: "(to the dude on the A train who said he was NYLON's digital director, attempting to impress some girl 1. Nice try but that's my job 2. And I'm flattered but that's some wishful thinking, babe, because it's an amazing job but it's sadly never gotten me laid!)" By placing her bragging in the lying mouth of a subway stranger, this updater covertly asserts the prestige of her position and at the same time insulates herself against similar claims. Particularly masterful is the covert assumption here that her position is one sufficiently grand to be the ethereal stuff of A train boasting.
posted by geoff. on Sep 1, 2009 - 41 comments

Tax authorities using social networks to find tax cheats Yet another reason to be careful who you accept a friend request from.
posted by reenum on Aug 30, 2009 - 25 comments

Facebook agrees to privacy changes [Flash video | article]. [more inside]
posted by shoesfullofdust on Aug 27, 2009 - 43 comments

Christopher Moore has been to Paris lately, and has decided to share some of his vacation snaps, and, most amusingly, teach us a bit of French.
posted by markkraft on Aug 26, 2009 - 32 comments

On Tuesday, Gawker media was taken offline by a German ddos attack. Today, three of the 'net's largest social media sites: Twitter, Facebook and Livejournal, are experiencing similar outages. Twitter now reports they are under a denial-of-service attack.
posted by zarq on Aug 6, 2009 - 107 comments

In response to a complaint by law students at the University of Ottawa in May of 2008, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has found that Facebook is operating contrary to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. In other words, Facebook is breaching Canadian privacy law. Facebook has pledged to work with the Canadian government on this issue, and has 30 days to comply; if the Commissioner remains unsatisfied with their progress, they may take the case to Federal Court to force compliance.
posted by stinkycheese on Aug 1, 2009 - 45 comments

The lying down game.
posted by furtive on Jul 16, 2009 - 80 comments

Run Firefox with greasemonkey and Facebook Purity to free yourself from the Tyranny of Facebook Quizzes. It's the nuclear option, and it works... like the bomb. BOOM. No more quizzy.
posted by chuckdarwin on Jun 18, 2009 - 72 comments

The top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets. Twitter is dominated by men, whereas other social networks tend to be dominated by women. Is Twitter biased towards men?
posted by desjardins on Jun 2, 2009 - 153 comments

Get Your Kid Off Your Facebook Page by Katie Roiphe You click on a friend's name and what comes into focus is not a photograph of her face, but a sleeping blond four-year-old, or a sun-hatted baby running on the beach. Here, harmlessly embedded in one of our favorite methods of procrastination, is a potent symbol for the new century. Where have all of these women gone? What, some future historian may very well ask, do all of these babies on our Facebook pages say about the construction of women’s identity at this particular moment in time?
posted by Locative on May 16, 2009 - 205 comments

It's on Facebook. It's also on MySpace. It even has a Twitter page. The White House is in the 21st century.
posted by pyramid termite on May 1, 2009 - 32 comments

"The Passover Seder, the oldest continuously observed religious ceremony in the world, tells the story of the Jews' Exodus from Egypt. Jewish tradition says that people of each generation must imagine that they personally had departed from Egypt, and the sages say that each generation must tell the story in its own terms. The sages probably did not intend this. "(Via)
posted by lucia__is__dada on Mar 31, 2009 - 28 comments

In 1996, sixteen children and one adult died in Dublane, Scotland after Thomas Hamilton walked into a school armed with four handguns. In 2009, journalist Paula Murray tracked down and befriended several of the survivors on Facebook, waited until they turned eighteen, and then wrote this article for the Sunday Express. [more inside]
posted by permafrost on Mar 18, 2009 - 66 comments

Music that makes you dumb. [more inside]
posted by flatluigi on Mar 9, 2009 - 102 comments

25 Things I Hate About Facebook [u o==o video]
posted by Stynxno on Mar 5, 2009 - 110 comments

The consumerist takes a look at Facebook's attempts at a new Terms of Service. Normally I would go straight to the article from a blog like this. But The Consumerist has good comments and in order to see anything on the Facebook side you need to be logged in.
posted by theichibun on Feb 23, 2009 - 38 comments

Dr. Aric Sigman has told us that TV is literally killing us, that it makes children pregnant, that Batman makes our kids violent and that multitasking ruins children's attention span. Now he says that social networking can cause cancer, strokes, and dementia. (PDF of press release)
posted by desjardins on Feb 19, 2009 - 58 comments

For those who haven't already heard, Facebook has recently changed their terms of service. Some people are uneasy about this, others want to lodge a federal complaint. But should we really be worried?
posted by lizbunny on Feb 17, 2009 - 97 comments

10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know [more inside]
posted by Afroblanco on Feb 12, 2009 - 52 comments

The kidnapping of Philip Rizk; later they tried to get his father as well. Philip has now been freed.
The detention of protesters highlights Middle East governments' ambivalent attitudes towards support for the Palestinians.
Here it is worth noting of course that Philip is not alone in his arrest. Another blogger Diaa Eddin Gad has also been arrested as have several people attending a Muslim Brotherhood demonstration. A strong, collective message was sent last February when Egypt and Saudi Arabia introduced a pan-Arab regulatory framework for satellite television stations. The document, titled "Principles for Organizing Satellite Radio and TV Broadcasting in the Arab Region," clearly targets independent and privately owned stations that have been airing criticism of Arab governments.
This has helped trigger a Revolution, Facebook-Style. [more inside]
posted by adamvasco on Feb 11, 2009 - 5 comments

Protests have rocked Reykjavík since Tuesday: Envious of Obama, Icelanders hurl yogurt and stage riots for new leaders, Global financial crisis overwhelms tiny Iceland, Flickr set of pictures of Tuesday's protest in front of parliament (complete with pepper spray on camera lens), AFP photos from Tuesday's protest, video from protests 1, 2, 3 & 4, Icelandic protesters pelt PM's car (includes short video). New age of rebellion and riot stalks Europe, The Icelandic "Facebook Revolution", Iceland is Burning part 1 & part 2 and Reuters factbox on Iceland and its economic crisis.
posted by Kattullus on Jan 22, 2009 - 45 comments

Everyone else is on Facebook, why aren't you? Not knowing the rules is not an excuse.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero on Jan 15, 2009 - 248 comments

Burger King's (CP+B's) advertising campaigns have been featured on the blue before. But this one takes the cake burger friendship.
posted by jckll on Jan 9, 2009 - 86 comments

A NEW FACEBOOK CONTROVERSY A NEW FACEBOOK CONTROVERSY has developed, this time over photos of women breastfeeding their babies. But Facebook is standing firm.. The protesters have also formed a Facebook group, of course, Hey Facebook, Breastfeeding Is Not Obscene. It's not the first controversy at the social networking site and this blog documents activities, rumors and news about Facebook. [more inside]
posted by etaoin on Jan 6, 2009 - 242 comments

Austenbook. It's trivial. It's silly. I grinned.
posted by mojohand on Dec 9, 2008 - 32 comments

Facebook and the Social Dynamics of Privacy (coming soon to the Iowa Law Review), by James Grimmelmann (law professor, programmer, MeFi's own grimmelm, and Level 1 Ensign Zombie): just in time for Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect, Grimmelmann suggests we rethink what privacy means both in legal terms and how that impacts social networks and their users. (Previously) [more inside]
posted by ahughey on Dec 8, 2008 - 39 comments

In 2009, a remarkably gifted politician, confronting a remarkably difficult set of challenges, will have to learn to say "No we can't", Guantánamo will prove a moral minefield, economic recovery will be invisible to the naked eye, governments must prepare for the day they stop financial guarantees, we will judge our commitment to sustainability, scientists should research the causes of religion, we will all be potential online paparazzi, English will have more words than any other language (but it's meaningless), Afghanistan will see a surge of Western (read: American) troops, Iran will continue its nuclear quest while diplomacy lies in shambles, the sea floor is the new frontier, we should rethink aging, (non-)voters will continue to thwart the European project -- but cheap travel will continue to buoy it -- though it has some unfinished business to attend to, and a Nordic defence bond will blossom.

The Economist: The World in 2009. [more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Nov 27, 2008 - 31 comments

Pro-Anorexia Group presence ballooning on Facebook. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue on Nov 25, 2008 - 161 comments

"Can Facebook defeat terrorism?" wonders Matt Armstrong. A conference of both web and social entrepreneurs, policy wonks, and activists will convene to create a how-to guide for changing the world through social networking tools. Jared "Children of Jihad" Cohen was a driving force behind the initiative. We've seen social networking impact an election, while others are already trying to change the world with it. This conference, while exciting and important, raises a few questions. Just look at the list who's convening it: "Facebook, Google, YouTube, MTV, Howcast, Columbia Law School and the U.S. Department of State Convene the Alliance of Youth Movements Summit." [more inside]
posted by cal71 on Nov 20, 2008 - 27 comments

Worried about social-network data mining? Facebook hires Ted Ullyot, former right-hand man to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, as its general counsel. Tapping Ullyot, who worked on the infamous torture memo and other illustrious projects, is a sign that the burgeoning Scrabble platform "is a little more grown-up," says Facebook public-policy VP Elliot Schrage.
posted by digaman on Sep 30, 2008 - 40 comments

Newfoundland's Progressive Conservative Premier registered his Anything But Conservative campaign today with Elections Canada. The same agency also deemed that the online vote swap on Facebook is in fact legal. They're hiring.
posted by gman on Sep 17, 2008 - 62 comments

Privacy is dead - get over it [part 2] is a talk by private investigator Steve Rambam. It's a talk he has been giving for a number of years where he shows how privacy is being taken away, not by sinister plots but because people are giving it away. With people putting up everything and nothing on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and so on, as well as a growing quantity of data held in private databases, he shows how easy it is to find out enormous amounts of data on just about anyone. [more inside]
posted by bjrn on Sep 2, 2008 - 65 comments

Facebook the Movie by Aaron Sorkin
posted by meech on Aug 30, 2008 - 22 comments

Hamlet as a Facebook News Feed
posted by blue_beetle on Aug 6, 2008 - 48 comments

Anti-Israel Facebook group "seized" - the Jewish Internet Defense Force (warning: self-starting Google video) says that it has taken control of an anti-Israel Facebook group and is steadily deleting members by the second. "It has also changed the group's administrator titles to read 'Mossad Zionist.'"
posted by mrgrimm on Jul 30, 2008 - 62 comments

The sad day has come: Facebook has shut down Scrabulous. Read the complaint here (PDF). Those suffering from withdrawal can head on over to Scrabulous.com. [more inside]
posted by ThePinkSuperhero on Jul 29, 2008 - 108 comments

£17,000 damages for victim of fake Facebook profile. Matthew Firsht found a fake facebook profile created in his name, and he has successfully sued the person who did it. Amol Rajan knows exactly what having your facebook online ID 'stolen' feels like, as do many others. Are your social networking friends always who they say they are?
posted by dabitch on Jul 29, 2008 - 31 comments

Ping.fm lets you update your social network statuses, blogs and microblogs simultaneously from one place. The current sign-up beta code is "tastyping". [more inside]
posted by nthdegx on Jun 12, 2008 - 28 comments